The Daily Show: World of Class Warfare

Wednesday

Aug 31, 2011 at 12:01 AMSep 1, 2011 at 7:06 PM

There's an ongoing argument in this country about how best to close the enormous deficit that we have incurred. Republicans have proposed doing it entirely through spending cuts, whereas the Democrats have bravely fought back, insisting we do it almost entirely through spending cuts.

There's an ongoing argument in this country about how best to close the enormous deficit that we have incurred. Republicans have proposed doing it entirely through spending cuts, whereas the Democrats have bravely fought back, insisting we do it almost entirely through spending cuts.

Recently, bizarrely un-eccentric billionaire Warren Buffett entered the fray. The billionaire said in an op-ed piece, "While most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks. My friends and I have been coddled long enough."

"I pay a lower tax rate on much of my income than my cleaning lady does," Buffett said on ABC News.

His op-ed was a thoughtful treatise on the advantages the super-wealthy currently enjoy at the hands of tax code, or to put it another way

"Warren Buffet wrote an op-ed. Is he completely a socialist?" asked one Fox Business anchor.

You really have no clue what socialism is, do you? Hey, that George Clooney is always bangin' different broads. W hat a queer.

So, closing a few corporate tax loopholes and returning the top marginal tax rate to the '90s economic boom-time levels is class warfare. If there's one thing the rich have learned, it's that class warfare is hell.

"It's disappointing. It's class warfare, and it's the kind of language that you would expect from a leader of a third world country, not the president of the United States," said Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida.

It's true, because the United State of America is not a third world country by any measure - except perhaps income inequality, where we rank worst than the Ivory Coast and Cameroon at 64th in the world. In your face, Uruguay, Jamaica and Uganda!

And by the way, not only is closing corporate loopholes and raising the marginal tax rate not class warfare, but it totally won't even work.

"The idea [is] that if we raise taxes as the president said, on millionaires and billionaires, raise taxes on oil companies, raise taxes on owners of private jets that that's somehow going to make a difference," Rubio said.

"The president wants to raise the top two income tax rates, which would raise $700 billion over 10 years. You know what, that's only a tiny fraction of the federal government's deficit," said Chris Edwards, director of tax policy studies at the Cato Institute, on Fox News.

Seven hundred billion dollars over 10 years? That's less money than Warren Buffett's cleaning lady pulls out of his shower drain every week.

So $700 billion in raised revenue ain't even worth the effort. I assume these folks have the same "why bother" attitude toward low-level spending cuts.

"Our National Endowment for the Arts, our National Endowment for the Humanities, all those frivolous things, those should all be on the chopping block," said Sarah Palin.

"[Obama] doesn't have to waste your tax dollars and travel around in a $1.1 million luxury liners," said Sean Hannity.

So when you cut it, it's $1.1 million! And when you tax it, it's only $700 billion.